Interpretive Summary: First-time field studies were completed in Egypt by U.S. Navy and USDA entomologists to determine whether commercial mosquito control traps, marketed for homeowner use, better serve as surveillance devices for monitoring populations of Old World sand flies, particularily Phlebotomus papatasi. This fly is the primary vector of cutaneous leishmaniasis and sand fly fever group viruses in North Africa and the Middle East. Our results indicate that carbon dioxide-baited/generating commercial traps performed significantly better than did commercial traps using light only as an attractant (UV, incandescent, and colored light emitting diodes). Carbon dioxide (CO2)-baited BG Sentinel traps caught approximately 3 x the number of P. papatasi as a lit, dry ice (CO2)-baited CDC light traps, a standard trap for use in sand fly surveillance programs. The butane-combusting MMP trap collected more P. papatasi than did the CDC trap, with the added advantage of independent operation for 3 weeks. Given the long reproduction time of P. papatasi (45-60 days/generation) and the high efficacy of the BG trap, further field studies with this trap in an attempt to reduce field population of this sand fly is desired.

Technical Abstract:
Adult mosquito traps of four types that are marketed for homeowner use in residential settings were compared with a standard CDC light trap for efficacy in collecting phlebotomine sand flies. We evaluated the Mosquito MagnetTM Pro (MMP), the SentinelTM 360 mosquito trap (S360), the BG-SentinelTM mosquito trap (BGS), and the Mega-CatchTM Ultra trap (MCU). To attract female sand flies, the MMP produced its own carbon dioxide; the CDC and BGS traps were provided with 2 kg of dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) daily, while the MCU and S360 traps used various light sources but were not baited with dry ice. No traps were baited with lures (lactic acid, octenol baits) offered for optional use with some models. Traps were rotated through five sites in a 5 x 5 Latin square experiment in a small farming village in the Nile River Valley 10 km north of Aswan, Egypt. Four repetitions were conducted during the height of the sand fly season (June, August and September, 2007) at a site where the vast majority of sand flies (˜ 94%) were Phlebotomus papatasi (Scopoli). A total of 6,440 sand flies were collected over four trials, 6,037 of which were P. papatasi (93.7%). The BGS trap collected significantly more (P < 0.05) P. papatasi than the MCU and S360 traps and twice as many sand flies as the MMP and CDC trap. Mean numbers (SE) of sand flies captured per trap-night were: BGS 142.1 (45.8) > MMP 56.8 (40.1) > CDC 52.3 (27.5) > MCU 38.2 (28.5) > S360 12.6 (8.2). Results indicate that several types of commercial traps are suitable substitutes for the CDC light trap in sand fly surveillance programs. Two thirds of all P. papatasi were captured in the two unlit traps (BGS and MMP) that produced carbon dioxide.